Objective:
This award will benefit the people of the United States by producing new knowledge that will significantly improve the evidence base for national food, nutrition and health policies. It will bring together two entities, the ARS and the University of North Dakota, each with strong scientific and technical capabilities to produce a combined effort that is unparalleled in its ability to design and conduct human clinical intervention trials addressing the knowledge gaps critical to policy development for reversing the national epidemic of obesity and its co-morbidities. This research will be among the first to test the efficacy and sustainability of U.S. Dietary Guidelines. It will thus be seminal in supporting the further development of those guidelines as well as related national policy concerning food, nutrition and health. Improved national policy will benefit the people of the United States by reducing the prevalence of obesity and obesity-attributable health care costs.

Approach:
This research will address the prevention of childhood/adult obesity, which involves food choices/patterns, physical activity and energy balance, metabolism/physiology, genotype/phenotypic expression, food access/composition, attitudes/traditions, and processes that can lead to diabetes, cancer, heart disease and osteoarthritis. This demands innovative, translational research to generate new knowledge and improve the evidence base for national nutrition/health/food policy. This will be accomplished in this project by addressing the following areas:
1. U.S. Dietary Guidelines Adherence and Healthy Body Weight. Research to identify barriers/ facilitators to adhering to the Dietary Guidelines.
2. Biology of Obesity Prevention. Research on metabolism/physiology affected by diet/physical activity in maintaining healthy body weight; use of “omics” tools to understand individuals’ responses to interventions and propensities to gain weight.
3. Food Factors in Maintaining Health & Healthy Body Weight. Research examining the effects of food antioxidants on metabolic responses to exercise.
4. Body Weight and Bone Health. Research on the roles of adiposity and body weight on inflammation and bone health.
5. Diet and Physical Activity in Mitigating Obesity-Promoted Carcinogenesis. Research on the effects of adiposity on the metabolism and anticarcinogenic mechanisms of selenium.